After fiddling with this for a few days I have finally found a working method of playing SA-MP on Linux.
I'm posting this here because I don't want other people to have to deal with the same issues that I did.
It should be said that I have only tested this on
Ubuntu 18.04 but the process is fairly standard and I believe
that it should work on a fair few distros if you follow the process properly and know your way around your specific distro.
It should also be noted that I am using the Steam version of GTA: San Andreas here but I believe you should
be able to achieve the same results regardless of your install method.
Prerequisites- You have installed WINE
- You have a patched gta_sa.exe
- You have the latest SA-MP installer downloaded
Finally, before we begin the installation process, there was one issue that I came across that needs to be addressed before we proceed.
When installed through Steam, the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas folder is located in a hidden folder in your home directory.
The reason this is an issue is because the SA-MP installer cannot see these hidden folders so we need to create a link to our Steam game install directory
(which is the folder called common for those of you who may not know). The way we do this is to use the ln command:
Code:
ln -s ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common ~/Desktop/Common
This command essentially creates a shortcut to the common folder and places it on your desktop.
I've chosen the Desktop here for the sake of simplicity but it would be more appropriate to place it in
your Documents folder or somewhere else that it can stay because the SA-MP application will always reference
this shortcut to launch the game.
Note: Make a backup of your Grand Theft Auto San Andreas folder before you begin this process
incase you mess up or it doesn't work properly that way you don't have to reinstall the whole game.
Installation- In the San Andreas root directory, replace the original gta-sa.exe with the patched gta_sa.exe
- Wherever you have your SA-MP install executable, open a terminal and run this command to launch the installer
Code:
wine sa-mp-0.3.7-R4-install.exe
- Follow the prompts until you get to the Choose Install Location section. Click browse and find the shortcut to the Common folder we created earlier.
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- Click the + button to expand the folder
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- Select your Grand Theft Auto San Andreas folder from the list and click the OK button.
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The installer should proceed with copying all of the files to your San Andreas root directory. Wait until this is finished.
- At this point we just need to edit the sa-mp.cfg file to fix an issue with the chat and menus not working properly. For me it is located in
Code:
~/Documents/GTA San Andreas User Files/SAMP
- Inside this folder you should find sa-mp.cfg. Open the file in a text editor and add this line to the end
According to https://wiki.sa-mp.com/wiki/Sa-mp.cfg:
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Afterward it should look something like this:
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Note: Don't forget to save the file.
- Finally, navigate to your Grand Theft Auto San Andreas folder, open the directory in a terminal, and type this command
This will launch SA-MP. It may ask for the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas install directory. If it does then just point it to the same folder that we did in the installation process.
Final Notes
The server in the screenshot is the one I'm on most often so if you play there I'll probably see you around.
I hope that I've been able to help some Linux users with this post.
Feel free to ask questions regarding this process and I'll try my best to respond but I won't be on here 24/7.
If this has helped you, I would appreciate it if you would send me a message and let me know. I'm always happy
to know that I've helped someone even if it's something minor like this.
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